


Parrot on his shoulder and feather in his hat.

by marieincolour



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amputation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Humor, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a hot and humid summer, and Dean is missing the bottom part of his leg. Sam makes it all better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parrot on his shoulder and feather in his hat.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [summer themed Dean H/C comment meme.](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html) Prompt can be found [here](http://hoodie-time.livejournal.com/679457.html?thread=9133089#t9133089)
> 
> I don't own Supernatural. I'm merely borrowing, and I'm certainly not making any money on this.

**Parrot on his shoulder and feather in his hat**  
  
  
“It's  _bad._ We're going to need some legit insurance on this.”

  
That's the last thing Dean remembers Sam saying before he goes under.

  
A week in hospital. That's an amazingly short time considering he had a leg amputated.

He was awake when they brought him in, bleeding from a head wound and cross-eyed with pain and exhaustion, Sam trailing behind his gurney like a lost golden retriever.

It's a confusing memory – people everywhere, talking,  _doing,_ with him in the centre of it all. Like some circus act gone horribly wrong.

  
There's morphine, and he fades.

  
_“The damage to your foot is simply too great to overcome, Mr. Harrison.”_

  
Eternal conversations with doctors and surgeons and physical therapists and..

  
_“At this point, with the level of deep tissue damage you have and the crushed bone structure, it is unlikely that we can save your foot.”_

  
He remembers an unwillingness to part with his foot. It's his  _foot,_ after all, and they've been a great team for a while now. But it's all a bit jumbled in his head.  _Morphine._

  
_“If we heal this, screw together what pieces we can and send you off, you understand that you will never have the function you will have with a prosthetic limb?”_

  
He wakes up after surgery to find a stump right where his ankle should be, cut off right over the joint. It doesn't hurt.

Not yet.

  
It's day two after surgery before he remembers waking up, and even then it's to find people around him constantly. Chatting, talking, asking questions. Sam, sitting in a chair next to him still looking like a dog waiting for his owner.

“'happened?” Dean asks, because it's the thing to ask,  _not_ because he doesn't remember having a cement block falling on his foot.

  
Building sites  _suck._ They disturb all kinds of shit and ghosts and spirits, and they're fucking  _dangerous._

Next time he'll.. Next time..

  
Next time he'll wear a hard hat. And.. Ski boots.

  
Their insurance holds up – amazingly so. Long enough for Sam to hustle enough money at pool (which is the only game he can manage without freaking out and calling Dean between dealings of cards) to settle into a dingy motel by the roadside. Long enough for him to get impatient, and for Dean to send him off to hunt a few small things on his own while he does therapy.

Physical therapy, because three weeks on his ass, waiting for a stump to heal isn't his idea of fun, and it takes three fittings and castings to get a single socket that doesn't slip off his leg entirely.

  
Then it's a matter of learning to walk again. His left leg is fine – strong and healthy and slightly hairy and pretty much exactly what it's always been. His right is a mess of bruised skin and pressure socks to lessen the swelling and oh yeah – there's no foot.

The new foot arrives sooner than Dean had expected, a newfound state of mind that doesn't count time helps, and before he knows it he's walking along bars with the right foot barely touching the ground.

Then with crutches, his right foot trailing the ground carefully like he's got a twisted ankle.

More weight, longer walks, and..

  
At one point, though Dean isn't quite sure what point that is or when or where or.. Anything, actually, he's walking. Like a normal person, walking around his room picking up belongings and getting ready to leave. Packing up. And he thinks, in retrospect, that that's the moment he stops thinking of himself as injured, and starts considering himself healthy.

Which makes the fact that he's got a lifelong injury a bit more difficult to tackle, actually, because when he had a  _real_ foot he didn't worry about stairs or about running or walking up hills.

But all that hardly matters.

  
There's a poltergeist in Baton Rouge. Which is one of his  _favorite_ places  _ever._ He can already taste the Po' Boys he's going to scarf down.

  
Sam drives for the majority of the trip, because Dean doesn't want to crash his baby. They don't talk about it. At all.

Dean sometimes sleeps with the foot on at night, because he doesn't want Sam to see. Even if Sam was there for the first few days after the hospital, and saw dressings come away with blood and removed the pillows Dean stacked underneath his leg relentlessly to relieve the pain.

Sam drives, and Dean doesn't complain, and neither one of them talk about that, either.

  
It's an ideal coping mechanism, obviously.

  
Louisiana in July is a horrible place, and Dean had forgotten. He's spent the last four months in Oregon, and while it was summer there, too, it was nothing like this. Not even close.

His back drips with sweat before he's even exited the car, and his stomach turns at the smell of bugs glued to the grill. Large, black, horrible insects he's going to make Sammy clean off. His face drips with sweat, too, now he comes to think of it, and his jeans feel clammy and cloying in the damp heat. Like he's in a boiling pot.

  
Sam wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and cracks the seal on a water bottle.

  
The library is cooler. His clothes still feel damp, and he shivers in the cold air.

  
He doesn't complain about the legwork. Doesn't say a word as they stomp around trying to interview people, the miles ticking up between them on the invisible little meter that resembles the one in the Impala that keeps flashing before his eyes. He's hot, so hot and sweaty he can't even impersonate a police officer or agent anymore. No amount of “can do”-attitude can convince  _anyone_ that he's anything less than a hot, sweaty mess.

  
They don't talk about that either. Sam doesn't moan or complain, and Dean doesn't either.

  
They've come a long way since Kansas. A long way since a poltergeist nearly did away with them both and almost tore down a house at the same time. Since their  _Mom_ had to come bail them out.

It's been a steep learning curve, but they did. Learn. Eventually.

Dean's last lesson is firmly stuck on his leg, hot and uncomfortable and itchy like only something foreign and plastic can be in the cloying July heat of Louisiana.

The house they end up working in has  _stairs._

  
Dean tries not to limp too badly walking up and down, but even on a good day there's a certain hitch to his step when he tries to do stairs. One hand on the banister. Preferably two, if he can manage it.

Hey, you try walking on a foot you can't feel.

  
Sam offs the thing. Almost alone, with Dean hanging like a damsel in distress up against a wall, one invisible hand firmly clamped around his neck like he's a wayward puppy, the other digging into his stomach.

He falls to the floor like a sack of potatoes, and when Sam reaches out a hand to help him up, he clambers out to the car on shaky legs and with an achy head.

  
They don't talk on the way home. Sam leaves the owner to clean up their mess, doesn't leave a name or a phone number to contact them. They just  _leave_ , like a bad date.

  
They don't talk when they get back, either, and Dean's grateful. He collapses face first onto his bed, and around a mouthful of pillow and a body throbbing to twice its own size, he can see his brother doing the same, feet flopping over the edge of the bed and arm falling over the side.

  
He sleeps fitfully, resurfacing to feel chafes and aches and throbs all the way up his back, into his shoulder and around his leg. Calf.  _Stump._

  
It's daylight when he wakes up again, and Sam is in the bathroom, fiddling with rustling bags and their first aid kit. He grins when he finds Dean watching him, bleary eyed and sleepy, and fucking achy and cold and  _awful._

  
“Morning.” Sam says, even if it's been an hour and a half since they got back, and Dean grunts, hands working feverishly to remove filthy jeans and shoes and..

  
There are hands, removing shoes and socks carefully, and then pulling his pants down like it's nothing and like it's the kind of thing younger brothers should be doing, and to be honest he's relieved enough to slump backwards onto his pillows and close his eyes, but the hands are there, too, pulling him up.

He makes a vague sound of protest, because the bed is so  _soft_ now that he's not wearing shoes or jeans. Sheets cool and soft against abused skin.

  
“Shower first. Then I've got a few things up my sleeve. Go on.”

  
It's slow going, because putting weight on his right leg feels like when you drag a finger (with the nail down) over a burn or a fresh cut. There's a deeper ache, too, in abused tissue and bone, and he limps. Fucking  _limps_ like he should have a parrot on his shoulder and feather in his hat, but Sam doesn't say anything.

  
Even if Dean can  _hear_ his pursed lips through the door.

  
The door to the bathroom opens even as he's trying to fit a clean pressure sock around his stump, foot in his lap already. Heavy and smelly and.. Yeah. He doesn't want to wear it.

He gives up trying to fit the sock on comfortably. Resigns himself to a full day of chafing and aching when Sam comes in, his hands going to the half opened first aid kit on the counter.

“Hop to the bed, I'll be right there.” he says, like it's perfectly natural to make your brother  _hop_ on his one remaining leg wearing only a towel across a motel room.

  
He squirms into a pair of boxers and a t-shirt before succumbing and pulling the covers up over his face and over his wet hair, throbs and aches even more evident now, in the heavy post-shower heat.

  
And then there are hands on his leg, the one that isn't there. He tries to kick with a foot that doesn't exist anymore.

“Shh. Just.. Relax, all right? I've seen it before.”

  
And he groans, because he knows what Sam's looking at.

  
“You've got to be more careful, Dean. This is.. You can't wear that thing until this heals.”

  
“Yes I can” he responds, muffled through flowery covers.

  
“No.. You can't. Hang on.”

  
And then there's relief. Blessed, sweet relief in the shape of ointments and bandages, wrapped carefully around his leg and there's talcum powder and it just feels so  _good_ he almost groans before Sam wraps an ice-pack with a towel around it around his leg, and the relief actually  _does_ make him groan.

There are pills, held out with a cold, sweaty bottle of water. Cool sheets and a hand that smooths shower wet hair back from his forehead before he goes under completely.

  
“I have your crutches right here” the voice says, and Sam sounds calm and almost amused.

“And if you don't use those instead of that foot for a couple of days, I'm hiding it.”

“'s like a treasure hunt” Dean slurs, because in his mind, caught halfway between sleep and wakefulness, there's a parrot on his shoulder and a feather in his hat.

The voice sounds more amused still as it smooths back his hair, but Dean doesn't know what it's saying, and he lets himself be carried away to sleep.

  



End file.
